SPOHP Partners in Research and Education

Partners in Research and Education

Student Action with Farmworkers

SAF works with farmworkers, students, and advocates in the Southeast and nationwide to create a more just agricultural system. Since 1992, we have engaged thousands of students, farmworker youth, and community members in the farmworker movement.
SAF mobilizes hundreds of college students through their Into the Fields internship and Sowing Seeds for Change fellowship. SAF interns & fellows provide much-needed skills, energy, and time to farmworker organizations and receive a life-changing, educational experience in return. The organization reaches out to community members by raising awareness of injustices in the agricultural industry. Using actions, presentations, publications and email alerts, SAF informs and mobilizes students and community members around current legislation, consumer boycotts, and other justice efforts initiated by farmworkers.
Through the Student Organizing School, SAF trains, mentors, and supports a small group of college students in NC to be leaders in the farmworker movement. Through an orientation, retreats, and farm labor camp visits, student organizers learn about the history of the farm labor movement, current farm labor campaigns, and popular education and organizing. Through campus organizing, the students support current policy and organizing campaigns to improve farm labor conditions.
Since its inception as a nonprofit in 1992, SAF's Levante Leadership Institute has been using theatre and arts to provide migrant and farmworker youth in rural North Carolina with opportunities to build self-esteem, develop leadership skills, and prepare them for higher education.
Learn more about the Student Action with Farmworkers organization.

The McComb Project

McCombLegacies.org is a collaborative effort of the McComb School District and community members of the Local History Advisory Committee who are committed to the research, documentation, and sharing of McComb’s history.
The website and this news blog are supported in part by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to Teaching for Change called “A Community of Promise: Building Strong Schools and Neighborhoods Through History, Activism, and Collaboration.”
The McComb Legacies organization was formed to help educate young people about McComb Mississippi's labor history and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Their website is designed to share the history of McComb with an emphasis on the stories of working people of all races, women, and young people and how they have strived for equity in labor, civics, education, economics, and the arts. The site is designed by students with an emphasis on oral histories conducted by students in an effort to understand, preserve, and share their local history.
Students in the McComb School District are not only learning history, they are helping to collect and preserve history by conducting oral history interviews with local elders who have played a key role in the rich history of the area. These interviews will be submitted to historical archives for posterity and used in classrooms to bring Mississippi history to life.
Two teachers in the program took SPOHP's oral history workshop in the fall of 2011 in order to learn best teaching practices in oral history.
In September 2012, The McComb Legacies project sent 5 students and one teacher to participate in the 4th annual Civil Rights Movement and Oral History in the Mississippi Delta panel event at Delta State University. The group experienced an unforgettable 2 days of panel presentations, tours, interviews, and meetings with other youth.
Learn more about the McComb Legacies organization.
Read the Zinn Education Project's article about McComb Legacies' visit to the Mississippi Delta

February 21-23, 2013, the McComb Legacies students are preparing a two-day interactive conference in efforts to produce a mini-documentary about the history of the voting rights struggle in McComb, Mississippi.

The conference will be a joint effort of the McComb Legacies students and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program featuring Mr. John Due, an attorney who worked in voter registration in Mississippi, and who played an important role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The conference will also include a tour of sites in Southwest Mississippi that were relevant to John Due’s work in the 1960s.

Sunflower County Freedom Project

The Sunflower Freedom Project's mission is to create a corps of academically capable, socially conscious, and mentally disciplined young leaders in the Mississippi Delta. They are located in the town of Sunflower in the heart of the Mississippi Delta and though it is one of the poorest areas in the country, there is rich history to be found there.
To quote their website, "The Sunflower County Freedom Project is an anomaly in the Mississippi Delta, reversing a trend of low rates of high school graduation and even lower rates of college enrollment. Through our six-year program, we genuinely reach students who would otherwise be left behind by a failing system. The SCFP is not simply a program meant to “keep kids off the streets;” we offer real academic and social enrichment that leads to real successes. One hundred percent of Freedom Fellows who complete the program not only graduate high school but go on to enroll in competitive four-year colleges and universities. All have graduated or are on track to graduate on time from these institutions."
Learn more about The Sunflower County Freedom Project

Zinn Education Project

The goal of the Zinn Education Project is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. The empowering potential of studying U.S. history is often lost in a textbook-driven trivial pursuit of names and dates.
Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history. Students learn that history is made not by a few heroic individuals, but instead by people’s choices and actions, thereby also learning that their own choices and actions matter.

Emmett Till Museum - Glendora, Mississippi

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955 when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him, and shot him in the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them. Till's murder and open casket funeral galvanized the emerging civil rights movement.
The Emmett (Louis) Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC) is a memorial museum and technology center that exemplifies a unique blend of cultural heritage preservation, a commitment to life-long and continuing education, as well as the effective deployment of advanced technology in a small rural community.
The memorial museum will be housed on the lower level of an old cotton gin that has been converted to serve as a repository for artifacts, photos, oral histories and audio-visual archives reflecting the Town of Glendora’s association with the history of the Till kidnapping, brutal murder & infamous trial.
Learn more about the Emmett Till museum.

Center for the Study of The American South
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Center for the Study of THe American South at UNC

The Center for the Study of the American South extends the historic role of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the world’s premier institution for research, teaching, and public dialogue on the history, culture, and contemporary experience of the southern United States. The Center promotes initiatives in the University's tradition of regional service and scholarship.
Read more on the Center for the Study of The American South at UNC website!

Blood and Oranges

An informal, provocative online journal of Florida History by authors Billy Townsend and Dan Weinfeld.
Read more on the Blood and Oranges website!

Matheson Museum

The Alachua County Historic Trust: Matheson Museum, Inc. is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of Alachua County, Florida. The Museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in operation since 1994.
The Museum complex includes 4 sites: the Matheson Museum, housing the exhibit hall and research library, the Matheson House, the Tison Tool Museum, and Sweetwater Park.
Learn more about The Matheson Museum Complex.

Pleasant Street Historical Society

Pleasant Street holds a rich heritage as a cultural and social center dating to the first years after Gainesville's founding. The neighborhood grew following the Civil War when emancipated African Americans relocated to Gainesville and established the neighborhood's many churches, businesses, and homes.
Today, Pleasant Street is one of Gainesville's five historic districts. Its diverse population includes people from all walks of life and backgrounds. Neighbors include lifetime residents, young families, college students and professionals.
The mission of the Pleasant Street Historic Society, Inc. is the preservation and revitalization of the Pleasant Street Neighborhood.
Learn more about Pleasant Street Historical Society.